| Invitation is an important speech act which can maintain harmonious interpersonal relationship and is a common linguistic phenomenon in people's daily verbal communication.Invitation behavior is influenced by many social factors,such as social distance,power,gender,age,etc.From the perspective of social pragmatics,this study analyzes the characteristics of invitation speech act by taking invitation in partial(prospective)affinity relationship,i.e.,the(prospective)parents-in-law and the(prospective)son-in-law / daughter-in-law,as an example,in order to explore the patterns of inviting-transactions and the characteristics of the use of invitation strategies in Chinese communication.This study aims to compare the patterns of inviting-transactions with Gu's three-stage pattern of inviting-transactions.At the same time,it explores the effects of gender difference and ranking of imposition on the employment of invitation strategies.Based on the three-stage pattern of inviting-transactions(inviting-declining-inviting again-declining again-insisting on the invitee's presence-accepting)proposed by Gu(1992),who takes the invitation between a prospective mother-in-law and a prospective son-in-law as an example,this study collects a total of 272 groups of invitation dialogues,among which 136 groups of invitation dialogues occur between the unmarried young and their prospective parents-in-law,and 136 groups are invitations between the married young(married for no more than 5 years)and their parents-in-law.The collection of the data from married group is for the purpose of extending the data,thus to expand the investigating scope.The number of thedialogues between the prospective parents-in-law and prospective son-in-law /daughter-in-law,the parents-in-law and son-in-law / daughter-in-law is 68 respectively.There are a total of 237 participants in this study,who are all ordinary citizens mainly from Henan Province and Gansu Province.27 unmarried young males and 29 unmarried young females with their parents-in-law(36 elder males and 39 elder females)take part in this study,the total number of which is 131.There are 106 participants in the extended experiment(17 young men,20 young women,34 elder males and 35 elder females).The participants in each dialogue bear real(prospective)affinity relationships.The inviters are the(prospective)parents-in-law,the age of whom is 45-65 and the invitees are the(prospective)son-in-law / daughter-in-law,the age of whom is from 19-35.The expected number of participants should be 204,however,when conducting the study,two groups of participants may accomplish a complete group of dialogues(e.g.,the invitation between the father-in-law and the son-in-law may be accomplished by one group of participants,and the invitation between the mother-in-law and the son-in-law is accomplished by another group of participants.The invitation of the two groups together form a whole group of dialogues),so the actual number of participants in this study is larger than the expected one,which is 237.This study adopts the method of role-play to collect data,and all the dialogues are recorded(face to face or by telephone).The collection of recordings lasts from July,2018 to January,2019.For the participants in real life bear(prospective)affinity relationship,i.e.,the inviters are the(prospective)parents-in-law and the invitees are(prospective)sons-in-law,there are four types of relationships between the participants:(prospective)father-in-law and(prospective)son-in-law,(prospective)mother-in-law and(prospective)son-in-law,(prospective)father-in-law and(prospective)daughter-in-law,and(prospective)mother-in-law and(prospective)daughter-in-law.There are situations of higher(invitation for dinner)and lower(invitation for travel)ranking of imposition in this study.Each elder participant invites the young participant for dinner and travel respectively.In this study,the independent variables are gender and ranking of imposition,dependent variable is invitation strategy,and controlled variables are disturbing variables such as age and social power.On the basis of the data obtained,this study explores the patterns of Chinese invitation-transactions and the invitation strategies used by the elders when inviting younger generations.Therefore,this study aims to answer four questions: 1.What is the overall patterns of inviting-transactions between(prospective)parents-in-law and(prospective)son / daughter-in-law when inviting their(prospective)son-in-law /(prospective)daughter-in-law? 2.What types of strategies will be used by(prospective)parents-in-law when inviting their son-in-law / daughter-in-law? 3.Does gender difference of the inviters affect the invitation strategies used by(prospective)parents-in-law? If yes,how does it affect the use of these strategies? 4.Does ranking of imposition affect the invitation strategies employed by the(prospective)parents-in-law? If yes,how does it affect the use of these strategies?After transcribing the dialogues I collected,the invitation patterns and the types of strategies used in each dialogue are analyzed.Referring to the research of Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project by Blum-kulka et al.(1989)and Garcia(2008),the strategies of invitation are divided into head acts(mood derivable,suggestion and query and want statement)and supportive moves(address and greeting,verification,query,explanation,suggestion and caring).The final data are analyzed by software SPSS 20.0.and WPS Office 2019.The results show that(1)Most of the inviting-transactions collected in this study appear in the pattern of inviting-accepting-negotiating.The inviting-transactions between the(prospective)parents-in-law and their(prospective)son-in-law /(prospective)daughter-in-law present four patterns: inviting-accepting,inviting-negotiating-accepting,inviting-accepting-negotiating and inviting-declining-inviting again-accepting.The pattern of inviting-accepting-negotiating takes the largest proportion and the pattern of inviting-declining-inviting again-accepting appears the least,which is inconsistent with the three-stage pattern of invitation put forward by Gu.(2)There are two types of invitation strategies: the part which can implement the speech act of invitation independently(head acts)and the additional parts(supportive moves).In head acts,the strategy of suggestion and query is the most frequently used strategy,followed by explanation.And for the supportive moves,the strategy of address and greeting is the most frequently used strategy,followed by mood derivable.(3)Gender has no effect on the frequency of the strategies in heads acts and supportive moves employed by the(prospective)parents-in-law.The elder females use more strategies in supportive moves.The most frequently used strategy in head acts for both the elder males and the elder females is suggestion and query.In terms of the frequency of each strategy used in supportive moves,the most frequently used strategy is address and greeting,and the strategy of explanation ranks second.(4)Ranking of imposition has no effect on the invitation strategies employed by the elder participants.As for head acts,the elder participants use the strategy of suggestion and query the most frequently in both higher and lower ranking of imposition.Ranking of imposition has no effect on the frequency of strategies used in supportive moves.In both higher and lower ranking of imposition,the elder participants employ more strategies of suggestion and query and explanation.This study has verified that changes have taken place on Chinese people's politeness concept,and to some extent supplements the politeness theory proposed by Gu(1990).In the future,more participants with various backgrounds and more social factors can be considered to conduct a more systematic and comprehensive study on invitation. |
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